


Helium

by LLReid



Series: Reunited [1]
Category: Bloodbound (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Death, F/F, Grief, Human/Vampire Relationship, Vampire Queens, Vampire Turning, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:40:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22333549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: Prompt: Imagine a grief stricken person A of your OTP visiting person B’s grave and talking to their headstone.Fic inspired by ‘Helium’ by Sia.~~~~~Only four days had passed since the ancient vampire had last heard the love of her life laughing, since she had last held her close and made love to her until they’d both fallen asleep entangled in one another’s arms. Yet the four days that she had been forced to live without Anastasia’s presence had been the longest of her life, the two thousand years that she’d been forced to wait for her to be born had seemed to pass by faster than the four days since her angel had died in her arms. Kamilah had known more loss in her long life than anyone would have deemed fair, so she was no stranger to the ache in her chest and the feeling of being lost, yet without Anastasia the world seemed more dismal than it ever had and the pain that she felt was far more unbearable than she recalled it ever being.
Relationships: Kamilah Sayeed/Anastasia Swann, Kamilah Sayeed/Main Character (Bloodbound)
Series: Reunited [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1608706
Comments: 2
Kudos: 58





	Helium

Kamilah put a hand against her chest as she cradled the precious Life’s Blessing that Anastasia had given her on the Dark Solstice. How absurd — how utterly absurd and useless — that her heart still beat and her precious Anastasia’s didn't. The girl had only lived to see twenty-two summers come to pass and yet she had changed the world far more in those twenty-two summers than Kamilah had done in over two thousand of them. Yet all she had done and the sacrifice she had made as she had taken down Gaius Augustine wouldn’t earn her the widespread recognition that she deserved outside of the vampire community, mere mortals would always remain ignorant to the fact that this wonderful girl who’d just barely become a woman had saved them. Even as New York City burned around her, Kamilah knew that Anastasia’s sacrifice had saved everyone, mortal and vampire alike.

Only four days had passed since the ancient vampire had last heard the love of her life laughing, since she had last held her close and made love to her until they’d both fallen asleep entangled in one another’s arms. Yet the four days that she had been forced to live without Anastasia’s presence had been the longest of her life, the two thousand years that she’d been forced to wait for her to be born had seemed to pass by faster than the four days since her angel had died in her arms. Kamilah had known more loss in her long life than anyone would have deemed fair, so she was no stranger to the ache in her chest and the feeling of being lost, yet without Anastasia the world seemed more dismal than it ever had and the pain that she felt was far more unbearable than she recalled it ever being. 

She hadn’t believed that she would find love again, after everything. Yet she had and it had been deeper than she ever thought possible and unrelenting and unexpected, the beginning and the end and eternity, the kind of love that had changed history, and changed the world. What people think to be their greatest weakness can sometimes be their biggest strengths. The most unlikely person can alter the course of history, and Anastasia had been proof of that. But like every good thing Kamilah had ever had, she had lost it. Perhaps the reason the girl’s turning hadn’t taken was because the world simply didn’t need another vampire with a coward’s heart. It just needed someone like Anastasia, pure and mortal and un-jaded by the woes that came from existing for eternity.

Kamilah’s eyes burned as she sat on the steps of the polished marble mausoleum that she’d spared absolutely no expense erecting in memory of her one great love. Even as the city burned around her, Anastasia’s resting place remained pristine. Red roses were her favourite flowers, so Kamilah had ordered five hundred of them to line the steps and had hired the best landscapers money could buy to ensure that they were never out of bloom. The smell of them was rather overwhelming but she knew that Anastasia would’ve been awestruck by the sight of five hundred of her favourite flowers entwined around the marble banisters and climbing the walls of the mausoleum amongst healthy looking green ivy — Kamilah had vowed to ensure that her resting place remained exactly as it was for as long as she drew breath, and she’d visit her every night...if only in the hopes that she would somehow feel the warmth of her presence once more.

“Your mother picked up your things from your apartment today,” she said, her eyes watery and stinging with tears as she stared at the image of Anastasia that she’d made the lock screen of her phone. “Not even Lily knows that I stole some of your things...there wasn’t a lot that I felt a need to keep but there were a few things I couldn’t bear to part with. I have a few of your favourite t-shirts that still smell like you and your favourite necklace with your name on it that you were given for your thirteenth birthday. I put it in the drawer of my nightstand beside Lysimachus’ wooden horse to ensure it always remains safe and within my reach.”

There was no answer as she spoke, which hit a particularly raw nerve, as Anastasia had been the type to speak so much that it’d been a running joke that getting her to shut up was impossible. A wave of nausea hit Kamilah was a surprising intensity as she recalled all the times she’d either been too busy, too tired, or just too selfish to really stop and linger on the mortal’s every word. There was nothing that she wouldn’t give to hear her voice one more time, even if it was in some utterly pointless conversation that she didn’t care to be part of.

Her hands shook violently as she opened up her phone and quickly went onto her camera roll, where most of its contents consisted of images and videos of Anastasia. Before meeting her there hadn’t been very many moments that Kamilah had felt the need to see immortalised through her camera, but after falling in love with a woman who’d never really lived in a world without having such technology at her fingertips she’d come to understand the importance of capturing as many moments as possible, and she was glad she had. Now that Anastasia had gone somewhere she couldn’t follow, her photos of her had become particularly precious. 

In each and every image the big blue eyes that had driven her speechless and melted the ice around her heart sparkled like sapphires. Her bravery shone in them in each and every image. Her sweet girl. The one who had done what many fearsome vampires could not and rid the world of Gaius Augustine once and for all. The one who did not fear. The one who did not falter. The one who did not yield.

“I wish I had days to spend with you— like this,” she managed to say as her eyelids drooped, her favourite image of Anastasia sleeping soundly in her arms lighting up the cellphone in her hand. “Just me and you.”

Tears continued to pour down her face as she climbed further up the marble steps and rested her forehead against the ornate iron gate that lead into the mausoleum. Alive or dead, Anastasia Marie Swann was the only one Kamilah would kneel for. The cold iron against her face did little to ease the migraine she’d been nursing for four days, yet Kamilah closed her eyes and began to sing the ancient words in her native tongue — the forgotten words of mourning, as old and sacred as her homeland Egypt itself. The same prayers she’d once sung and chanted whilst cradling her brother’s little wooden horse close to her heart. 

Kamilah’s clear, husky voice filled the silence that had befallen the city since everything had gone to hell. She imagined her sweet Anastasia looping her slender arms through hers, and letting her lean on her as they slow danced in the living room of Kamilah’s penthouse. Outside of the graveyard fires flickered all over the city, plumes of dark smoke marring the ruby sky, yet Kamilah couldn’t bring herself to care about the state the city had descended into, she couldn’t bring herself to care about anything besides the fact that she’d lost her one great love.

“Please come back to me, my love,” she sobbed with such force that it bordered on hysteria. Her grip tightened on the iron gate as she gasped for breath and her tears began to fall too quickly for her to wipe them away. She felt weak and dizzy, and she knew that she needed to feed, yet she didn’t have the will to do so. “I thought that I knew how it felt to lose everything, yet I had no idea. Nothing had ever hurt as much as this does...I had no idea that I was even capable of bearing such pain. I miss talking to you. Laughing with you. I miss having you in my bed, but I miss having you as my best friend even more...I just...I miss you. I miss you so much, Anastasia. So much.”

Another shuddering gasp wracked through Kamilah’s exhausted body as she slumped against the gate. The void seemed to be swirling, swallowing her up bit by bit. "You will not understand, my love, but...before I met you I thought that I knew what my fate was to be, and I embraced it. I ran toward it. Because it was the only way for things to begin changing, for events to be set in motion. But no matter what I did, Anastasia, I want you to know that in the darkness of the past two thousand years, you were the brightest of lights for me. In the year that we spent together I feel like I lived more than I had in the more than two thousand that came before. I just— I can’t believe that I let that light go out. I can’t believe that I couldn’t save you, as you saved me.”

Despite their age difference, like Anastasia had been, Kamilah hadn’t been an easy person to be with, to understand. Where Anastasia had lifted everyone’s spirits and brought joy to everyone who’d know her, Kamilah had frightened everyone before her sweet mortal had come along and changed her heart for the better. She had frightened everyone, but not her. She knew that was why she’d initially fallen in love with the red haired girl, against her best intentions. Anastasia had beheld all Kamilah had been and all she was yet to become, and she had not been afraid. Not once. Not even when Kamilah had attempted to scare her away from Adrian, not even when she’d threatened her after Lily’s turning. She had been the one person who’d always seen Kamilah for who she was — not what she was.

“Why did you have to leave me?!,” she sobbed. The mix of awe and anger and the realisation that the world was too large and too empty, and beautiful, and sometimes so overwhelming in its wonder that it was impossible to drink it all down at once hitting her so hard that it drew the breath from her lungs. “You, Lysimachus— each of you promised me that you would survive! Did this really have to be the one time you broke a promise that you made me? Why must I continue to lose everything I hold dear? Have I not known enough pain? Have I not suffered enough?”

With what little strength she had left, she hit her head on the iron gate in the hopes that she’d feel something, anything, besides the grief that was drowning her. She hated the way that love could break and heal and make everything seem possible and heroic, only to then destroy everything in its wake when that love was lost.

“I’m sorry, my darling,” she whispered into thin air. “I’m not angry at you for doing what you did, I know that it was the only way. I know. After my father died Lysimachus told me that we should not look back. He told me that it helps no one and nothing to look back, that we can only go on...but how can I be expected to go on in a world without you in it? How can anyone expect me to carry this pain for eternity?” She sniffled and wiped her watering eyes with a heavy hand. “I know that you’d have the insight needed to help me see the toxicity of my state of mind, you’d be the only one capable of pulling me out of this hell. Nobody else has ever known me like you did, even when I didn’t want you to know what I was thinking or feeling...you did.”

For a few moments, Kamilah fell silent. Despite knowing that her friends were only a phone call away, she had never felt more alone than she did then. She knew that she’d think of Anastasia everyday for as long as she continued to draw breath, for as long as she was forced to continue on alone without the love she had waited millennia to find. Logically, she knew that if the afterlife was real she wouldn’t be alone. If it were real, Anastasia would never leave her. Yet she knew that every day that her love was there and she cursed to continue on in a world without her in it, she would wonder what had become of her. Kamilah had forgotten so many people who’d once been important to her, yet she knew that she would not ever be able to forget Anastasia. Not for one moment would she forget the woman who’d saved her, who’d been the sunshine of her life.

She didn’t even have to be looking at her phone to see the girl’s face. She saw her face each time she closed her exhausted dark eyes. Anastasia haunted her thoughts, danced behind her eyelids, made her wish to do grand and wonderful things in her name, made her want to be a woman who deserved to have eternity at her fingertips. At twenty-two, Anastasia had done more than most vampires twice Kamilah’s age had done, so she couldn’t allow herself to ponder what the girl would have done had her turning taken. The mortal had been willing to lose everything to stop Gaius, to save all of them. Kamilah knew that could do nothing less, as doing anything would be an insult to the memory of Anastasia. She couldn’t allow herself to think of what good her influence would have brought upon a world so undeserving of her kind heart, all she could vow to do was lead a life Anastasia would’ve been proud of. Yet, despite how she knew that she must continue, the injustice of it all only upset her more than she already was.

On paper, one would have thought that Kamilah had certainly had more to lose. A girlfriend who’d loved her more than anything. A company and a clan who’d all follow her into hell, should she command them to. A destiny that was long awaiting her return. Now, all Anastasia had was an extravagant grave for a saviour that would never earn her rightful place in history, a broken heart, and a shattered world left in her wake. Yet Kamilah knew that had she been the one to die in their fight against Gaius, the world would not have seemed quite so dark. No one would have hurt as much as they were all hurting had anyone else been the one to take Anastasia’s place.

Silently, in her heart, Kamilah vowed that she wouldn’t ever allow for her light to be completely extinguished. She would not let that light go out. She would fill the world with it, Anastasia’s light — her gift. She would find some way to light up the darkness, so brightly that all who were lost or wounded or broken would find their way to it, a beacon for those who still dwelled in that abyss that the mortal had plucked her out of. She was more afraid than she could ever remember herself being, yet she would remake the work — remake it for Anastasia and for those that she had loved with her glorious burning hearts; a world so brilliantly prosperous that if they had ever to meet again in the afterlife, she would not be ashamed of her. She would make them a world that there had never been, even if it took until her very last breath, that was exactly what she would do. Anastasia was her queen, and she would offer her nothing less.

“Kami?”

Immediately Kamilah jolted to her feet. The muffled sound of the nickname that Anastasia had given her ringing out in the eerie silence that had befallen the burning city. Grief had its way of playing tricks upon the mind, yet it felt so real. So close. Yet she could not give grief or fear another heartbeat to whisper its poison into her blood. She could not lose herself completely in the darkness, as she had so many times before. She had survived pain and hatred and despair; she would survive this, too. Because Anastasia had shown her that the story of Kamilah Sayeed was not a story of darkness, that it didn’t have to be. So even though she was afraid of that crushing blackness, she would face it, with the courage having one true love had offered her — a love that had made living not so awful after all.

“Kamilah?!,” the voice shrieked, more frantically. “Kami! Kami, are you there?!”

“Anastasia?,” she said, shakily, falling against the rose lined banister. The voice was at once the night and the dawn and the stars and the earth, and every inch of the vampire’s body both calmed and went on alert at the gold in it. She knew that the voice was probably little more than a flicker of memory from a time when, just for a moment, she'd been free; when the world had been wide open and she'd been about to enter it with her love at her side. It was a freedom that she knew she should continue working for, because even though she'd tasted it only for a heartbeat, it had been the most exquisite heartbeat she'd ever experienced.

“Kami! Where am I?! It’s dark and it’s....it’s cold.”

Kamilah blinked as the sound of someone violently thrashing around echoed, it really did sound like it was coming from inside the mausoleum. She hoped that she hadn’t lost touch with reality so drastically that she was hallucinating, but whether she had or hadn’t, she knew that she had to check. She had to see.

For a moment the ancient vampire hesitated, knowing she was gathering the strength, hating the pain and sorrow and guilt lingering on every line of her body. She’d have sold her entire soul to whatever dark gods were watching to never have to look at Anastasia dead again. She didn’t want to see her that way once more, she didn’t want to remember her that way.

“Anastasia, I’m coming!,” she said, her hands trembling as she tore open the gate without bothering to reach into her pockets for the key that she had been carrying everywhere since the funeral. The grief and pain were still there, writhing inside her, but for the first time in days, she felt as though she could see. As though she could breathe. As though she had some small reason to hope. 

She could hear a heart beating. A vampire heart. Anastasia was breathing, she realised as she neared her coffin, the ashen wind of the burning city tearing at her face and clothes. It was Anastasia’s heart and breath she was hearing, she’d have recognised the sound anywhere. That wildness, that untamed fierceness that she’d seen in so few throughout her life...they weren't truly born of a free heart, but of one that had known despair so complete that living brightly, living violently, was the only way it was possible to outrun it. She knew then, knew with all her heart, that her Anastasia was still breathing, and fighting like hell to keep steady, despite the fact she could tell her fear was spiking.

“Kami!”

“I’m here! I’m right—“

Before she could even reach out to tear the lid from the polished mahogany coffin that lay inside, the lid shot off with such force that it rattled off of the roof. Kamilah didn't know when she’d fallen to her knees on the cold marble floor, when her body began shaking with the force of it. Red exploded in her vision, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to breathe fast enough, couldn’t think above the roaring echo in her head. One heartbeat, she was reaching for the coffin — the next, she had fallen to her knees. In her two thousand years of life she had never felt such relief, she’d never seen anything quite like what was happening before her eyes. She’d never allowed herself to hope, never felt this burning and unending thing, so consuming she might really die from the force of it.

Gazing back at her, was her darling Anastasia. She looked exactly as she had the last time she’d seen her: a fine-boned face, silky ginger hair that grazed the bottom of her ribs, and the white lace dress that Kamilah had bought special to lay her to rest in. Yet there was no sign at all of the gaping stab wound in the centre of her chest. No sign of her sun kissed skin, instead her skin shimmered with veins of pure gold — iridescent and delicate looking, like a pale blue butterfly. No sign at all of her icy blue eyes or perfectly straight mortal teeth, instead, long sharp fangs protruded from her gloriously full lips and burning red irises were glowing at her in the darkness.

Anastasia was a vampire.

\- fin.


End file.
